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StimuLess

No deal is better then a bad deal. It nice to see some GOP members waking up. How was your 8 year nap?

Dems were the only ones to vote for the Obama stimulus package in the house last night. Even 11 members of the democratic party opted to vote nay.

At a news conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the Democrat-only passage of the economic stimulus package, contending that Republicans were indeed included; their suggestions on tax cuts had become part of the bill itself, she said. But several G.O.P. senators and representatives hit the airwaves today, criticizing the spending portions and promoting their view of a more palatable alternative — bigger, broader tax cuts and incentives.

When Mrs. Pelosi was asked whether the vote — 244 to 188 without a single Republican’s approval — represented a failure on her part to advance President Obama’s desire for a broad bipartisan bill, she practically snapped:

“I didn’t come here to be partisan. I didn’t come here to be bipartisan. I came here, as did my colleagues, to be nonpartisan, to work for the American people, to do what is in their interest.

The president’s agenda is reflected in this legislation. It’s — I mentioned, some of the priorities that were there about creating jobs, cutting taxes, helping states through this difficult economic time, and to do so in a fiscally sound way.

People vote for what they believe in. Clearly, the Republicans did not believe in the agenda that I just described for you, and that’s probably one of the reasons they voted that way. I think they probably voted their conscience and they couldn’t support that. …

We reached out to the Republicans all along the way, and they know it. And they know it. They were part of the original bill, with the — some of the tax provisions were their suggestions. They had what they asked for in terms of committee mark-up. They had the rule on the floor that gave them plenty of opportunity to make changes. They just didn’t have the ideas that had the support of the majority of the people in the Congress. ”

She pushed back strenuously in response to remarks made by Minority Leader John Boehner and other House Republicans, who slammed the bill as “partisan” and full of excessive spending rather than the approach of using tax cuts.